tune without the words
by TrisakAminawn
Summary: Jim's always had this terrible compulsion to try to hold things together, even when they were hopelessly broken. (Things including though not limited to Gotham and his own marriages.) Sometimes, it works. Oftentimes, it doesn't, but that's never been a good enough reason not to try.


**the tune without the words**

 ** _A/N:_** _Timeline note: I'm assuming as I usually do that the Bludhaven atrocity was actually much smaller-scale than it was presented in canon, because they forgot about it so quickly it was ridiculous, even if Bludhaven were still a reasonable distance from Gotham instead of sneaking closer and closer every time you turn around like she had been for a while._

* * *

Jim Gordon doesn't go out drinking much.

There are eight million reasons for that, starting with his complete lack of spare time and his family history of alcoholism and continuing all the way to the fact that since he became Commissioner, he can't really walk into a cop bar without ruining the night off for everybody there.

Also, pretty much all his friends are either dead or a thousand miles away, and Batman _really_ doesn't go out for drinks.

Still, there are some days, especially now he lives alone and there's precious little chance his daughter will ever move in again and none at all of remarrying…he needs a bit of relaxation. A bit of normal.

Some days, his people make him stop working, and he can't say they're wrong, but he doesn't want to go home yet, either.

So then he comes to a place like this—not dive enough to be dangerous, not a place where there are regular fights or where people go to hide from cops, but not shiny and upscale, either. The sort of place where it's safe to be nobody.

The sort of place where there's actual food, for that matter—it's not that he's completely hopeless in the kitchen, but making the effort to cook for just himself has never been worth it.

Barbara has started twitting him about his cholesterol and watching his diet, but he's lived on coffee half his life, and after that year in No Man's Land scrounging for and growing his own food (a time when growing a garden was a declaration of supreme confidence in your own strength, because if you didn't have what it took to defend it, all your crop would be plundered before it was even ripe) he is never going to turn down fried anything. So he's debating the wisdom of a pub burger when he goes in, and looks around with only half his attention.

You can't turn the cop brain off just because you've clocked out for the day, though, and he zeroes in on the outlier almost at once.

The only man sitting alone at the bar is young. He really is. Jim would be surprised if the kid's seen twenty-five. He's young, but if you're in the habit of reading people by posture and movement, more than physical details like smooth skin and muscles that have just finished filling in, you don't notice that right away. Because he takes up space like a tiger just recently out of a cage, and his back is bowed over the bar like he's a hundred years' worth of tired.

But then one shoulder sinks a little, and his chin turns to one side, and he's so _young_. Any younger, and Jim would suspect him of underage drinking. And Jim, well…there's a reason he joined the police force straight out of high school, a reason he's stuck with it so long, and it's not entirely duty and it's definitely not anger.

He's always had this terrible compulsion to try to hold things together, even when they were hopelessly broken. (Things including though not limited to Gotham and his own marriages.)

Sometimes, it works. Oftentimes, it doesn't, but that's never been a good enough reason not to try.

Jim takes the next stool over. The place is crowded enough that it's not weird; he has to sit next to _somebody_. If nothing else, misery loves company.

He continues his observations in peripheral vision as he sits down. The kid is tall; no obvious major injuries but he holds himself like he's in pain. Might be cracked ribs. Fair skin, dark hair, with a shock-white forelock that _should_ make him look even more like a swaggering James Dean wannabe than the leather coat and combat boots manage.

He's bracing the boots against one of the rings on his bar stool like someone who knows what they're good for, though, how to make them work for him instead of making him clumsy. Not a wannabe anything. There's a particular weighted bulge in one side of his coat that says he's got a gun there, hidden in a pocket instead of secure in a holster, and Jim wonders if he's licensed to carry concealed. Probably not. All Jim's cop senses say 'troublemaker,' but they also say 'not looking for a fight.' If he's a rebel without a cause, at least he seems to understand how damn pointless that is.

The kid glances left as Jim settles down, gives a quick threat assessment and seems kind of taken aback, like whatever he was expecting from the guy intruding on his solitary drunkenness, Jim wasn't it. Jim takes that moment of staring as an opportunity to nod a greeting, then orders himself a beer.

The kid grimaces, knocks back the rest of his amber-colored-distilled-something, neat, in one gulp, and catches the bartender's eye with a finger up before he finishes turning away. The tender—middle-aged and possessed of profoundly sarcastic eyebrows—scoops the empty glass up as he goes, away up the bar to get Jim whatever's on tap and take another order from the barrel-chested guy leaning over the bar down that way.

The kid's hand closes into a fist, and when Jim folds his own arms on the bartop, there's a moment where it looks like he's shoving down some violent defensive response. For his own part, Jim holds back a sigh. He's getting closer to sure. For all the attitude, this kid's no gang alumnus, and those aren't the reactions of an abuse survivor, either. Or at least not just that. There's one visible scar, still a little new and raw, like he only recently survived having his throat cut. Brutal, though nothing Jim hasn't see worse than.

Almost seems familiar, he feels like. Probably because he's seen all of it before. That's all.

(Once, he had a son. Usually, he tries to forget. Jimmy was a beautiful, talented boy, and he always wonders how they could have failed to _see…._ Sometimes, when he's talking a young officer through a crisis, he can't help feeling like he's trying to fix his own mad, dead child. He hopes he isn't. There's trying to hold broken things together, and then there's dealing with a different problem than the one that's actually in front of you.)

Their drinks arrive, Jim's beer pale and bitter, and another of whatever whiskey-type the kid knocked back like it was water. He sips the new one, not like it tastes good but like he's determined to make it last.

He's got a lot of young men like that on his force, is the thing. Boys who shipped out young and fresh from high school, and came back a hundred years older, scraped raw by loss and killing. They're still kids, still make him feel old, but there's a comfort in it, strangely; in seeing that same weariness in them and knowing they'll never leave it behind entirely but it _can_ get better. Even in Gotham. Gotham may be terrible, as cities go, but it's not a war zone. And the police are responsible for keeping the peace. Especially in what he's made of the department, since he took over. There's purpose, there's just enough of that combination of boredom and excitement…there's a chance to heal. It's a good fit, for a lot of veterans.

He has to talk them down, sometimes. More often than the average officer, even though even more of them _also_ come with the kind of de-escalation training you can't get on a city budget. They've learned to kill to protect their own, and it's hard, when things get dark, to remember this is a different kind of war.

"Where did you serve, son?" he asks.

The young man stares at him, like he can't imagine how Jim figured him out.

"I know a soldier when I see one," Jim tells him.

The kid barks out a laugh, then lets his head drop back and laughs again, bleak and bitter and incredulous. "Yeah," he admits after a second, folding back in, a little less defensive now. "Yeah, I was a soldier. A good soldier," he mutters into his drink, and there's no pride there.

Only more of what was in his laugh, less surprised and more angry, like whoever told him that about himself poisoned the very idea, and oh. Jim's seen this before, too. Some commanding officer pushed the kid too hard, twisted his arm and his oath of obedience and made him do something he'll never be able to walk away from, and then told him he should be proud of it. Something that haunts him, that he doesn't think he can pay for if he spends the rest of his life trying.

Five years ago, a promising young lieutenant Jim had had his eye on for captain shot five accused rapists and then himself, because he'd gotten too tired to keep running from what he'd done in the war.

"You know," Jim says easily, "Gotham PD's always looking for good men."

Even more disbelief. Kid looks like he's going to start laughing again. "You offering me a _job_ , old man? You don't know me from a serial killer."

"I'm inviting you to apply." Could be the kid'll fail the psych. But if he makes it in….

Well. Gotham can always use good men.

Especially ones who've proved they can survive a good chewing-up.

The kid shrugs, finishes his drink. There's a change in his posture now, as he slides off his stool, and if Jim hasn't inspired him to throw himself into a life of police work he's certainly inspired him to do _something._ "I'll think about it," he says, and the laughter's become a grin, crooked and bright for the bleakness that's still showing underneath. Jim really does feel like he's met this kid before. He drops a twenty on the bar, and turns away.

"And get a holster for that piece before you have an accident, son," Jim adds.

Point in his favor, the kid doesn't get mad, or even nervous. He sort of shakes his head. "Should've known you caught that," he says, and raises his hand in a very still sort of wave. Halfway to a salute, really. "Later."

* * *

 _ **A/N:** I'm told James Junior never died in the Nu52, and is a regular in Suicide Squad. This is weird, but eh. I'm just glad they didn't do the thing they did with Grant Wilson, and have the formerly dead asshole become a dominant part of the family suddenly; after Nolan decided that of Jim's two children the boy was the important one and the girl should never even be the focus of the camera, I was prepared for that. Films have a lot of influence on comics, after all._

 _Anyway, yay dramatic irony. ^^ And Jim._


End file.
